Seren Selvin Korkmaz is co-founder and co-director of the IstanPol Institute. She held the position of founding executive director from January 2018 until November 2023. She is a Mercator-IPC Fellow at İstanbul Policy Center of Sabancı University.

Between 2023 and 2024, Seren Selvin Korkmaz served as a political specialist at the U.S. State Department, advising on Turkish politics at the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul. In 2024, she was honored as a Turkey Europe Future Fellow, an initiative by Mercator Stiftung and TUSİAD. In 2023, she received the prestigious Marshall Memorial Fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Her prior roles include non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., Fox International Fellow at Yale University, and research fellow at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul and a researcher at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies. As a political analyst and advisor, she works closely with international and domestic stakeholders, providing expert insights on a wide array of issues, with a particular focus on Turkey’s internal political dynamics, emerging trends, and key developments.

A political scientist by training, Seren Selvin Korkmaz completed her Ph.D. studies at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Institute of Turkish Studies at Stockholm University and is expected to receive her degree in 2025. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University. Korkmaz has taught at Stockholm University and served as a guest lecturer at esteemed institutions, including the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. Her research focuses on populism, political parties, voter behavior, election strategies, opposition dynamics in autocratic regimes, transatlantic relations, and Turkey-U.S. relations.

Korkmaz has published a large number of commentaries, policy papers and academic articles and coordinated various projects on Turkey’s political dynamics. She is a frequent political commentator in both Turkish and international media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Deutsche Welle and the Wall Street Journal. She has delivered invited talks at prestigious institutions such as Stanford University, the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., IFRI, ISPI and the Delphi Economic Forum, Brandweek İstanbul, among others. Korkmaz has organized and participated in meetings with Turkish, European, and U.S. stakeholders to enhance transatlantic relations.

Since 2013, Korkmaz has been actively involved in various academic and non-governmental initiatives, aiming to connect civil society, academia, and public policy through her research and policy recommendations. Up until 2017, she served as the Turkey director for the Political and Social Research Institute of Europe (PS:EUROPE), an institute she co-founded, based in Austria and Turkey. She is currently a member of several working groups on Turkey-EU relations, Turkey – US relations, and the future of democracy.